BAKU, Azerbaijan: Azerbaijan said on Saturday (Sunday in Manila) it had freed 10 Armenian soldiers captured last month during fighting between the Caucasus arch foes. After Russia-mediated talks, 'Azerbaijan handed over 10 Armenian soldiers to the Armenian side,' the Azeri security services said in a statement, without giving a date for their release. Armenia in exchange passed on maps of minefields it had planted in territory that Azerbaijan seized from it last year in the war for the Nagorno-Karabakh region, it said. The swap comes after Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliev and Armenia's Prime Minister Nikol Pachinian agreed to ease tensions last week at a rare meeting in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi. It is the first concrete sign of a decrease in tensions between both sides since last month's fighting, which killed 13 people.
